Would Jesus promote punishing the innocent instead of the guilty?

[Tulayhah-Asadi]

"My kingdom is not of this world"
"They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely"
"But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."
"If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also."
"And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well."
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
"it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God"

These are amazing teachings for their time. As far as I know, they have no precedent in any religious scripture that predates. What really strikes me about them is that even Christianity as a religion has never truly appreciated or owned them, that's how radical these teachings are.

I agree with you that this is a wonderful radical message. And that no one has managed to live up to it.

Nothing is 100% new, and I think we can see things evolving toward this message through the Old Testament. Early on, it seems simply to say that if God loves you you'll be rich and live a long time. But as things go on the emphasis switches from worldly rewards as a sign of God's love toward an emphasis on the weak and those who are, in worldly terms, "unsuccessful." 

So for example the Book of Job is a strange meditation on how worldly success may be decoupled from God's love, and even the best person may suffer. 

The prophets say explicitly that God doesn't want our offerings if we're not feeding the widows and orphans. 

So I think the big change comes when there's a sort of reversal from the original, simple idea that God rewards the good people with wealth, and flips over to the conviction that wealth is an impediment and God prefers the poor. But this reversal is instigated from within, by prophets and critics among their own ranks.

One thing that's encouraging to me is that this message seems to have soaked so thoroughly into our culture that it no longer needs Christians to advocate it. (Especially when so many self-described Christians oppose what the New Testament actually says.) The social justice movements in the US, for example, are not explicitly Christian, but I think would be impossible without the seed planted long ago in the Gospels. And the New Testament even warns us quite explicitly what the powerful people will do to those who work for this radical love.

Very fair analysis. Regarding the social justice movement, I feel they are limited to the issue of economic justice and so don't fully comprehend the wonderful, radical message of the Gospels. I'm by no means a leftist because I see that they are really reaching out only to the "working class" or "middle class", and likewise, various social justice movements restrict themselves to seeking racial, gender equality and justice (again, the grievances are pretty much economic). That's not what really strikes me when I read the quote "but many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first". To me, "last" in this context refers to the dispossessed and outcast elements of society, the sick and the broken. I think of the drug addict living in filth in some alley, and basically the "lowest of the low", the disfigured child that begs on the street in some third world country, the wretched soul that is living out a life sentence in a tiny cell, the mentally deranged person at a mental institute, the extremely obese person that people only look at with disgust, the lonely unattractive woman that has no hope of a romantic relationship, the homeless alcoholic whose life is meaningless, the pedophile who feels constant guilt for his unacceptable but uncontrollable sexual urge, someone who is fully paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair all his or her life, and so on and so forth. These are the lost souls that as far as I can tell no social justice movement is doing anything to comfort and uplift. What attracts me to someone like Jesus of Nazareth is my belief that he is someone that would happily embrace all these outcasts and be a light unto them. But where can we find someone like that today? I try to be someone like that but I am hopelessly flawed myself, I have so much biases and social conditioning that is hard to overcome, but nevertheless such behavior is my ideal.